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In January 2008, Matti Hiltunen registered the domain piraattipuolue.fi and set up a BBS on the site. In May 2008, about 50 founding members of the party held the founding assembly in Tampere.[2] In September 2008 the party started to collect the 5,000 supporter cards [fi] needed to officially register the party. The party's goal was to take part in the 2009 European Parliamentary election. The supporter cards were collected by 1 June 2009,[3] too late for the elections. The party was officially registered on 13 August 2009.[4]

In October 2009, the Pirate Party took part in the special municipal election of Loviisa with 1 candidate, but did not win a seat. The party's first major election was the 2011 Finnish parliamentary election with 127 candidates in 11 constituencies,[5] gathering 0.5% of votes and becoming the largest party to have no seats in parliament.[6] In the 2014 European Parliament election it gathered 12,378 votes (0.7%).[7] In the 2015 Finnish parliamentary election the party got 25,105 or 0,8% of total votes, and was left without seats in the parliament.[8] Consequently, Ministry of Justice decided to remove the Pirate Party among 5 others from its list of political parties due to lack of confidence in parliamentary voting for two elections.[9] The party collected the needed 5,000 supporter cards again and was registered on 6 June 2016.[10]

In the 2017 municipal elections, the Pirate Party gained two seats on municipal councils, one in Helsinki and one in Jyväskylä. Helsinki's council member Petrus Pennanen received 1,364 votes;[11] Jyväskylä's council member Arto Lampila received 191 votes.[12]

The party has a youth organisation, the Pirate Youth (Finnish: Piraattinuoret). It was founded on 5 February 2009 in Helsinki. It has an upper age-limit of 28 years.[14] Membership of Piraattinuoret is free of charge.